10 Grossest Comic Book Relationships You Won't Believe Exist

Comics wouldn’t be the same without the relationships within them. From tragic, tumultuous love stories to happy marriages, seeing characters have love lives just like us adds some extra realism wherever they can be found – even when it’s between two people dressed head to toe in spandex.

But, unfortunately, this realism means that comics have their fair share of weird and just plain messed up relationships – just like real life. Except much worse, because at least we don’t have laser beams, long-lost siblings and nemeses interfering with our dating plans.

Or becoming dating plans, because there’s a strikingly worrying trend of having plot twists reveal that a couple are actually related – though the more worrying part is the frequency with which they just keep on dating anyways. There must be something about facing evil everyday that makes things like casual incest comparatively chill, because rarely are the more questionable relationships ever actually called out.

Between siblings, underage aliens, and horses, here are some prime examples of how your love life could be much, much worse.

10. Doctor Octopus And Aunt May

Marvel Comics

Arguably the weirdest thing about Doctor Octopus and Aunt May briefly existing as a couple is that, by all means, it actually wasn’t that awful.

Sure, he was using her to get her recent inheritance, and sure, he doesn’t even try to hide the steel tentacles, but he does protect her from harm’s way, and you could argue that it looks like he does appear to care a bit about Aunt May.

No, the gross part of their relationship appears forty whole years later, in The Amazing Spiderman #699, where Spider-Man taps into the Doctor’s memories to find the old lady coaxing him into premarital sex. Worse yet, it appears when Parker tries looking for a nice memory in the scientist’s brain, which does suggest he may still burn a candle for the comic book cougar.

Although your nephew seeing essentially a live-action sex tape of you is gross by any standards, the real tragedy of the romance is that it didn’t live on – because nothing would have been funnier than seeing Peter Parker deal with the new addition to the family.

9. Spider-Woman And Hawkeye

Marvel Comics

When compared to a large portion of superhero relationships, Clint and Jessica’s dating period seems totally normal. Except for the fact that Clint has just left his wife, Mockingbird, who the pair still need to work with, which creates a sort of drama that usually can only be sampled on a TV soap opera.

That, and Jessica uses spider-pheromones to try and get him to like her, which – although he seems to like her before – is absolutely creepy as hell, because the last reason you should want someone to date you is because you smell like a sexy spider.

The unfortunate part is they are written well, and initially are kind of a cool couple – it just seems super forced to have them go from having never spoken to being a comic’s main love interests in two issues. Had it taken just a little longer it could’ve come off really well, but the whole thing has the unfortunate aura of being rushed into life.

8. Ambush Bug And Starfire

DC Comics

Although not a full-on relationship, the fact that supposed-hero, Ambush Bug, routinely convinces Starfire to pose for cheesecake-esque panels and take ‘pictures’ for him in the older comics is pretty damn creepy. It’s heavily implied that Starfire has no idea that the whole situation is anything less than innocent – largely because she’s an alien with zero concept of earth stuff.

The idea of a good guy taking advantage of anyone is gross enough, but it’s also worth keeping in mind Starfire was also characterised as younger back then. Not a child, by any means, but her Teen Titans’ characterisation did appear – and act – much younger than that of her more adult, hardier self in Red Hood and The Outlaws.

Given Ambush Bug is basically DC’s answer to Deadpool, it seems super strange that they would also show him to be sketchy as hell. That said, it’s also definitely no longer canon, so you have to give the Bug a bit of a break.

7. Joker And Harley Quinn

DC Comics

It should come as no surprise that the clown duo are a pretty unhealthy relationship. A good chunk of their comics cover the fact that, all cool aesthetic and occasional healthy characterisation aside, the two basically make each other worse than they already are – and given they’re both murderers solo, that’s saying something.

Hell, Harley’s entire arc in basically every Suicide Squad comic ever is either missing The Joker, or hating his guts and doing anything possible to avoid being like him. Of Joker’s long, bloodstained history, a decent chunk of his worst deeds have been done to the one person he’s supposed to not want to maim.

In 99% of comics, the pair are the poster child for a toxic relationship, and that’s gross enough to make the faceless Joker pale in comparison.

Both Joker and Harley have better functioning relationships with the godamn Batman than each other – and while that means he’d be a perfect couple’s counsellor, it also means the whole thing becoming healthy is unlikely.

6. Supergirl And Comet

DC Comics

A tale as old as time – a girl falling in love with her occasionally-transforming horse.

While that may not be the exact saying, it is almost exactly the storyline of Comet, a mind-reading, immortal super-horse looking for love. Mercifully, Comet never comes onto Supergirl while a horse, as he can turn into a human while a comet is in the same solar system as him. While this is great because there’s at least technically no bestiality, Comet is still a horse most of the time, which means his relationship with a human is still a little odd.

Possibly more important is the fact he never actually reveals who he is to Supergirl – so as far as she’s aware, she dates some dude whose presence weirdly coincides with space rocks. This also means the poor girl had no idea she was secretly dating a horse, which in retrospect is maybe for the best.

Comet also had a short romance with Lois Lane, showing that apparently, all you need to do to get mad dating game is secretly be a horse.

5. Captain America And Sharon Carter

Marvel Comics

There are continuities where this couple isn’t totally awfully – namely, ones where they’ve retconned Sharon being the great-niece of Captain America’s initial love interest, because otherwise, it is so wrong on so many levels.

Peggy and Sharon were initially written as sisters, which – although not suitable for the time scale of Captain America – was a little weird, because at the very least that way Captain America wasn’t dating Peggy’s descendants. But, in order to have Sharon be roughly the same age as Steve, changes were made so she was instead Peggy’s great-niece. Although there’s nothing wrong with Captain America wanting to date someone his age – especially a stole cold badass like Agent 13 – there is something a little unsettling about the fact she’s basically the grandchild of someone he dated.

It’s not Steve’s fault that being frozen in ice for decades made the dating game weird for him, but the complications do make this relationship a little bit strange.

4. Nightcrawler and Daytripper

Marvel Comics

When your reaction to finding out you’ve been dating your sister for god knows how long is saying “oh boy!” and then continuing to date her, something has gone very, very wrong in your life… or with your writers.

This is the unfortunate reality for Nightcrawler, after discovering that his long-lost sister was actually not that lost, and that they’d been going steady for some time now. That said, the two were also adoptive siblings, so whatever way you look at it, Kurt had some pretty heavily concerning stuff going on at the time.

Weirder still, nobody appears to bring up how uncomfortable the whole situation is afterwards. You’d think incest would equal maybe a side plot, but apparently it was totally normal by X-men standards – which is more than a little concerning.

Daytripper is, in theory, Nightcrawler’s sister twice over, which officially makes it twice as creepy that it wasn’t their sibling status that got them to break up.

3. Black Widow and Ivan Petrovitch

Marvel Comics

The most tragic part of the gross undertones that would rise between Natasha and Ivan is that, for a really long time, Ivan was characterised as the closest thing to a healthy father figure the assassin would ever get. Deadly Origins, however, totally destroys this, by showing us that this is apparently because the man has always held some unrequited romantic feelings for her.

It might be because he tells her this in his new space robot form, but it just doesn’t seem anything like the Ivan we’ve seen prior, and the sudden 180 change from father figure to creepy old dude makes it all the more sad.

When you think of how few people Black Widow has felt like she could trust in her life – especially form her childhood – the whole thing becomes more miserable than gross, because their entire relationship from her being a little girl now has uncomfortable undertones.

Even Freud would try and repress the events of this comic, which makes it probably one of the grosser surprise love interests of the comic era.

2. Hal Jordan And Arisia Rrab

DC Comics

Hal Jordan dated a thirteen-year old alien girl, and everyone was somehow okay with it because she used space magic to make herself look older. This is a sentence you can never unread, and for that we are sincerely sorry. If it makes you feel any better, she was called Arisia Rrab, which is the coolest name ever, for one of the most unfortunate characters ever.

Arisia’s crush on Hal – who were shown as almost sibling like, just in case the age thing wasn’t enough – manifested through the ring to age her to an adult, in a move that makes you hope the writers involved with the comic were doing okay.

It’s worth mentioning that, for all intents and purposes, Arisia was essentially a kid in an adults’ body, which only really serves to make the whole situation even weirder than it already was.

Arisia and Hal would end up breaking up in Action Comics #620, meaning Arisia lost years of her life she’ll never get back for a year or two of dating. It doesn’t seem like the fairest trade ever, somehow.

1. Quicksilver And Scarlet Witch

Marvel Comics

What’s worse than dating your sister? Having your possible dad watch the two of you bone. Such is the reality of the 2000 rewrite of the X-Men, which decided that these things were a really solid concept to put in their most popular franchise.

Again, one of the creepiest parts about this whole thing is apparently heroes are incapable of judging their comrades, as Wasp even implies at one point that incest isn’t considered totally gross in normal society. We can but hope the retcon presumed she lived among wasps and was also messed up, because it’s sort of a basic human reaction to be at minimum sort of grossed out.

It would be horrifying, were parts of it not so hilarious. In particular, Captain America totally missing the mark on how the two ‘love each other’ is maybe the most awful and funny thing to have happened in a comic to date.

Honestly, then entire of the Quicksilver/Witch relationship reads like someone was dared to make the creepiest fanfic they possibly could – and they achieved it.